WSJ Hedcut of Scrat from "Ice Age"

"Ice Age 4: Continental Drift" opened nationwide last Friday, so I just had to share this unique hedcut I created for the second film in the series. Hedcuts for The Wall Street Journal have traditionally been reproduced in a vertical rectangular format (half-column). On a few occasions over the years I asked them if I could (literally) work outside the box. I think a few animated characters would've particularly benefited from going horizontal - Lightning McQueen from "Cars" and Dory from "Finding Nemo" come to mind. I remember asking for a little extra space for Sulley - the big hairy blue guy from "Monsters, Inc." I'm not sure that the powers that be at the Journal always shared my own sense of humor...they always said NO - with one wonderful exception...When Joe Morgenstern reviewed "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown" back in 2006 he gave me carte blanche to choose whichever character from the film I wanted to draw. I selected Scrat - the squirrel/rat - forever in search of an acorn. I asked my art director if I could create a separate "mini" hedcut of Scrat's raison d'être - to be placed subtly somewhere on the other side of the same page. I admitted that lots of readers would wonder what the hell the image was doing there, but those who were in on the joke would get a real kick out of it. Unbelievably, they bought the idea, and since - so far as I know - this was the only time the WSJ did something this outrageous...I think this edition is a real collector's item!